Rudy Responds to the Edwards Foreign Affairs Attack

Rudy Giuliani’s communications director, Katie Levinson, just sent me a sharp response to John Edwards’ attack on Giuliani in the September edition of Foreign Affairs.

“Voters will buy this latest political attack about as much as they bought it when Edwards claimed the war on terror was simply a ‘bumper sticker,'” wrote Levinson. “You almost have to feel sorry for the guy at this point as he continues to struggle for relevance in the Democratic primary and is lashing out in all directions.”

In the magazine, Edwards pointed out that Giuliani in March called for abandoning the “war on terror” because he said Giuliani admitted that “America is seen as a country by too many that wants to have war.” Levinson writes that Edwards took the quote, which appeared in a CNN story, out of context. She provides a campaign transcript of the speech, given to the National Newspaper Association on March 22, to make her point.

Here’s the campaign’s transcript.

“The second thing I want to talk about briefly because I think it will be a big issue in 2008 no matter what happens is the terrorists’ war on us and I think it’s really time that we renamed it because I think we made a mistake in naming it the war on terror. We made a mistake because it fits in to a hole where now America has been redefined. Some of it we’ve done ourselves, some of it has been done overseas, but America is seen as a country by too many that wants to have war or exercises its power too much or pushes its way around too much. America is just the opposite kind of country. America is the kind of country that loves peace, America doesn’t like war. We haven’t liked any war that we’ve been in. We don’t like this war, we can see the tension it’s causing, we can see the frustrations it’s causing. We didn’t like the Vietnam War, we didn’t like the Korean War, we didn’t like the Second World War, it took us a long time to get in to the Second World War. It took us too long to get in to the Second World War. If we had gotten in to the Second World War in the mid-thirties, maybe millions of lives could have been saved, including hundreds and thousands of American lives. We didn’t because it’s a country that is reluctant to go to war and when it goes to war, becomes uncomfortable with war. … ”